How does social media affect learning and the
classroom community?
I believe
that this issue is very important for a number of reasons. What really made this issue come to mind and
stand out to me was an article on the upcoming Olympics. This summer Olympics is being referred to as
the first “social Olympics” where social media is going to play a large role in
how we experience the Olympic games. In
this article they had statistics of the massive jump in social media users
since the last Olympics. Facebook had
100 million users last Olympics, this Olympics it has 900 million. Last Olympics Twitter users were sending
300,000 tweets per day. Now there are
over 400 million tweets per day. (Laird, 2012)
This just
goes to show the trend of how people are using the internet. More and more people are gathering and
sharing information from social media and as educators we had better be aware
that our student population is definitely among these users. It is important for us as educators to really
see and understand the impacts and effects that social media has on both
student learning and building a classroom community.
I believe
that this question is significant to all educators. Social media can be a great tool in the
classroom if we understand how to use it effectively. To use social media effectively we must first
understand the impact and effects that it has on student learning and
collaboration to build a community of learners.
There is
also the topic of cyber bullying and several articles that I have found on the
link between a person’s social media use and their self-esteem. These are the kinds of factors that need to
also be considered when thinking of how and/or if to introduce social media
into the classroom.
In a
study conducted by University
of Salford in the UK on how social media can actually increase our anxiety and
lower our self-esteem because we are constantly comparing ourselves to others
online and many of us have forgotten how to switch off. We are in control of the technology, not the
other way around. (Indvik, 2012)
Despite these
negative points I believe that addressing and using social media as educators
will become and should be very important.
I believe that the negative impacts should enhance this reason rather
than subtract from it. We should take
the opportunity to teach students about social media and help them learn how to
deal with it and not let it control their lives. Social media isn’t going away and is very
prevalent in our daily lives so how would we be helping students by ignoring it
in the classroom?
Works Cited
Indvik, L. (2012, July 08). Social Media Fuels Low
Self-Esteem, Anxiety [STUDY]. Retrieved July 09, 2012, from Mashable.com:
http://mashable.com/2012/07/08/social-media-anxiety-study/?WT.mc_id=en_top_stories&utm_campaign=Top%2BStories&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
Laird, S. (2012, July
08). Why Social Media Will Reshape the 2012 Olympics. Retrieved July
09, 2012, from Mashable.com: http://mashable.com/2012/07/08/2012-olympics-social-growth/?WT.mc_id=en_top_stories&utm_campaign=Top%2BStories&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
